With more than a million people expected to attend the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 45th president of the United States, wireless networks such as AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) and Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) have bolstered capacity to handle the expected increase in mobile phone usage. While the wireless carriers have used temporary COWS (cell sites on wheels) during the previous presidential inauguration events, installations will be permanent this time round.
“We didn’t just roll in equipment and temporarily increase capacity for the inauguration. The National Mall is a stage for major events all year round,” a senior executive with a leading wireless carrier said.
Great deal of change
The reason for this is that there has been a great deal of change since the previous two inaugurations. In Barack Obama’s first term inauguration in 2009, the portion of the population in the United States that owned a smartphone was 10%. The network traffic then consisted mostly of calls, SMS and some MMS. In 2013 during the second Obama inauguration, data usage in the Washington D.C. area was 16 times more than the previous inauguration for AT&T despite the fact that the crowd was smaller.
Since then, the LTE wireless network that Verizon had unveiled back in 2010 has gone mainstream and now more than 88 percent of the U.S. population own a smartphone. This year’s inauguration is therefore expected to witness unprecedented data usage with attendees expected to stream, tweet or send the President-elect’s speech through various social media platforms.
Enhanced capacity
Consequently, Verizon has raised the capacity of wireless data by about 500 percent. Verizon’s network engineers are also in a position to adjust the COWS that have been set up around the National Mall in real time. The wireless carrier has also set up antennas that are capable of tilting so that network engineers can adjust their angles from a remote location.
AT&T, on the other hand, has increased its LTE capacity around the National Mall by around 1000 percent.
Shares of AT&T Inc rose by 0.49% in Thursday’s trading to close the day at $41.00. Verizon Communications Inc rose by 0.21% to close the same session at $52.36.
